


The Backdraft

by Davechicken



Series: The Pilot and his Broken Saber [8]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 08:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6847672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe goes out to fly a mission, and he does not come home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Backdraft

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-equivalent, but more graphic, emotional torture. Character death is Han's canonical death.

Poe Dameron likes to think of himself as a relatively ‘together’ kind of guy. You know. Good in an emergency. Level head in a tight scrape. Cool and collected under pressure. Great at making snap decisions on the seat of his pants. Pilots have trigger-reflexes, and have to trust they’ll jerk _right_ when it’s right and _left_ when it’s… also right. Make the decisions as they need to be made, process the danger later.

Much later. When your feet are on the ground, after you’ve taken the sure, adrenaline-proud steps from your cockpit. Wobble and waver when you’re in the shower, and only fellow pilots can see you. But don’t - don’t **ever** \- lose it in the air. Losing it in the air leads to freezing at the stick, leads to unswerving flight, leads to gunned down to pieces. Or worse, leads to joystick jitters, and being so convinced you won’t make a bank, a pull, that you aim straight for the thing you’re avoiding and smash yourself open. 

You don’t _ever_ lose it in the air. You’re not only risking yourself, you’re risking your bird (and those are precious, so precious), your wingbuddy (even more precious) and the whole damn war effort (beyond precious, priceless). 

So he isn’t. Losing it. When he flies the recon mission that Snap’s too tired to take. He isn’t. Losing it. When he skirts over the planet’s surface and _hears something_. Hears something low, like a voice kept pitched to not be heard by people in the next both along in a busy cantina. _Whispers draw focus._

“BB-8… do… are you picking up any…?”  


**Come here, boy.**

It’s wrong. Wrong, like - like the thoughts he processes internally, the conversations he has with himself, have suddenly developed a different tone. And a different source. It feels like his own thoughts, but it doesn’t _sound_ like them. Still, there’s an inexorable power to it, like - like - 

**Come to me.**

Heavy. Heavy, like a command from his General. A sense that he needs to _obey_ , that it’s **right**. Poe pulls at the chin-strap, clawing it off, trying to breathe evenly. BB-8 is beeping in loud distress, and he rasps: “It’s okay, buddy, I– _kriff, what’s going on_?”

He’s locked in something to the navicomp, some co-ordinates. He doesn’t remember putting them in, but he can see the computer calculating the jump. “Buddy, what… what did I just…?” He stares, and the ship’s pointed away from the planet he’s supposed to be reconnoitring. He doesn’t remember doing it. Or… his fingers do, his hands, but he can’t access the thought processes from it. Not… really. It’s like there’s a strange gap. He never gets that flying, except on the homeward jag, when the biological autopilot kicks in. 

“BB-8, can you… can you lock me out of the navicomp?”  


His astromech sadly says it’s impossible, because Poe just cut out that routine in the programming. Which he also doesn’t remember doing.

**It’s time we met one another, don’t you think?**

This time the echo of the voice doesn’t fade in the same way, and the cold horror sets into his gut. He doesn’t know whose voice it is, but he has a strong suspicion. It’s no tone, no timbre he recalls hearing in the past, and it’s… eerily familiar to how Kylo’s voice sounds, when he’s thinking thoughts directly into Poe’s head. _Snoke._  Snoke’s in his head.

_Kylo, help!_

**He can’t help you. But he’ll have fun trying.**

Poe watches as hands that don’t obey him press for the jump, and then he’s mercifully unconscious.

***  


When he does come around, he’s in a strange room. It’s plain, the walls broken only by architectural support, the lighting hidden and diffuse. He can’t tell which of the sections are doors, but he also can’t move very much. He’s strapped into a chair that’s achingly familiar, and he _does not want to be in it one little bit thank you, very much_. His wrists are cuffed, his ankles bound, his torso belted down and a strap around his head keeps him from lifting it away from the vaguely cushioned headrest. He’s immobilised, other than a few wiggles, and there’s no physical pain, but there doesn’t need to be.

The room has that distant, off-key hum that says _big engine_ , but what kind, he has no idea. Maybe like the one Kylo had him stra– _no stop thinking about it_.

Stop thinking about it. Stop. Stop. Think about later. Think about anything but that. 

His mind refuses to move on, stuck in an interminable loop of memory that he’s _now not certain_ isn’t externally influenced. He remembers the voice, remembers seeing his body do things - or have done things - without his consent, without his volition. How does he know he’s in here on his own, now?

_And is this how Kylo felt, all those years?_

There’s nothing. No recognition for him waking up. No footsteps. He expects there won’t be Stormtroopers this time, but that could be wrong. Last time they’d hurt him, first. Softened him up, most likely. Maybe some people did crack under purely, solely physical torture, but Poe hadn’t been one of them. He’d been proud of that, at the time. Even as they battered him, lacerated him, and contused him deep inside. He’d taken the sharp - and dull - pains, the electric-stings, the twisting burns. They’d hurt like a Hutt-hug, but he’d got through them all. Got through them until–

No. He forces himself out of that train of thought, goes back to - back to the walls. Looks at the lines, tries to calculate the angles of the triangular sections. Tries to remember how you work out the degrees and the lengths and some other stuff like area and tries to remember that magic triangle rule and wonders what composition the durasteel is to be that colour and looks at the ceiling and also the places where the light spills out and–

It’s square, this room. The other one was a thin strip. A walkway for a man who had nothing to do but advance in a line - or just exist - to incite fear, and steal a mind away from itself. A man in a mask, a voice altered forever and–

_–why can’t he stop thinking about it???_

The worst part is thinking that he might be doing this to himself. Thinking that - here, in a room with no external stimulus - that he might interrogate himself, might break his own mind. Might willingly go back to that moment, that moment when he hated the boy he’d loved, when the boy he’d loved had tortu– **tortured** and **interrogated** him.

There. He’s thought the words. He’s said them, in the confines of his head. What Kylo had done to him, aboard the _Finalizer_ , was torture. Interrogation. Abuse. Trauma. All those things and more. Violation. He’d been so angry, at the time. Angry that he let him, angry that Kylo wanted to do it, angry that he couldn’t escape, and angry that Kylo didn’t even acknowledge the fact they’d been - they’d been _together_ , even if briefly, even if childishly. Ben.

A name his now-lover won’t even use. Ben. He’d been thinking it, all the way through. He’d imagined his face under the mask, and he’d wanted to scream at him to _stop it, stop it, stop it_. But he hadn’t been able to, and he’d had fingers in his mind. Fingers that ripped his thoughts and heart to shreds. The very last place that was _him_ , that was _his_  and no one else’s… 

Now it’s not even just Kylo who’s been there. It’s _that bastard_. The one - the one who is the cause of all this. The one who crawled up inside his boyfriend’s head for years, and _how did Leia, Han and Luke not notice this?_ How did _Poe_? Because this is subtle (some words, some actions, little more), but over the years… 

He’s going mad just thinking about it, and he wonders what Snoke’s endgame is, here? Why steal him? Why not Kylo himself, unless this is meant to torture Kylo? Is he no longer able to slip inside his former Knight’s mind, since he’s freed himself from his own, self-imposed Force nullification? And why won’t anyone _talk to him_?

_Kylo, Kylo - can you hear me? KYLO. KYLO. I NEED YOU TO SAVE ME._

Nothing. Nothing. Poe isn’t Force-sensitive, but Kylo says they’re bonded, or something, which he doesn’t really know what it means, other than it made Kylo really happy and also made it weirdly easier for Kylo to talk to him in his head? Or something. It’s not anything he’s equipped to understand, like a colour after red that the eye - the normal eye - can’t perceive. But surely, if he’s in enough distress and screaming… Kylo should hear? Would he be able to send anything back along the same lines if he did? Is Poe in some weird, Force-blocked room? If so, would Kylo sense him as missing? Before the Resistance acknowledge him as such, anyway.

_Kylo. Kylo, he’s got me. I don’t know where. He flew me here. Me and BB-8. I’m afraid. Kylo? It’s a trap. Please be careful. Please._

He can’t say ‘save me’ again, but he also can’t say ‘don’t come for me’. He knows Kylo **will** come for him, even if he begs him to think of the wider world. Kylo will come, because that’s what he does.

**And then he will be mine, again, and you’ll see it happen _._**

All of a sudden, the voice. He wonders how long it’s been listening, if it’s listened all along. He wonders if it (no, name it, call it what - **who** \- it is)  _Snoke_ can hear everything he thinks or not. He doubts he’ll get an answer, and he wouldn’t trust it, even if he did. 

“You know what, you’re a coward. You won’t even show your face, or fight people on fair grounds. Coward. Bullying non-Force-users. Targeting _children_. Can’t you face full-grown adults?”  


**Your childish appeal shows how weak-minded you truly are, pilot. A man who wins doesn’t need to confine himself within pathetic and idiotic rules.**

“The rules are what make us who we are,” Poe snaps back. It’s disconcerting, not having a place to turn his face. Not having somewhere to focus his frustration and anger. He already feels like he’s going insane, but talking to the walls is one step too far. “Your precious ‘Dark’ is so weak you have to twist and turn children to it. It isn’t so strong that it can win people over for itself. And look what Kylo did, the moment he could! He turned his _back_ on you.”  


**And he lost the Force in doing so. He is weak. There is not enough power in him to truly ever be my Apprentice. He has power he is too afraid to use.**

“Kylo got the Force _back_ , when he knew he could.” Poe’s surer, now. He remembers the Light in Kylo’s eyes when he realised he could still access his sense of the galaxy. When he used it, and didn’t immediately run back to Snoke’s arms. When he broke _free_. He’s still not a Jedi like Luke is, like Rey, but he’s not whatever Snoke wanted him to be, either. That sparks like a little burst of hope in his chest, and he huddles around it. Snoke doesn’t control Kylo. Couldn’t control him, not when he turned and tried to strike him down. Couldn’t stop him from rejecting his conditioning so thoroughly that he tuned out the Force like a body rejecting foreign matter. Couldn’t control him when he found enough of himself to stand on his own two feet again.  


It’s why Poe is here. Snoke no longer rules Kylo, which means he’s taken something that doesn’t have the power to fight back. Something he can use _against_ his lover. For Anakin, it had been Padmé. For Kylo… it was him.

**If he chooses to side with the Jedi, then he will be destroyed with the Jedi** _**.**  _

Poe is surprised by the pettiness, suddenly. Although this incredibly powerful monster can control his mind and read his thoughts, he’s… really doing this out of spite, isn’t he? It makes him seem more… human. Wicked, cruel, sadistic, horrifying… but _human_. Or… _sentient_ , maybe. He’s not some distant, detached, impossible power. He’s a creature with urges of his own, and–

That’s obviously too close to the bone, because his mind goes fiercely _sideways_.

***

Poe is there-and-not-there. It’s like a dream in some ways, because he’s sort of aware that what’s happening isn’t happening, that it’s a memory, or a possibility. It’s not reality. He’s helpless to escape it, though. It’s bright and vivid and real enough to be real life, but one last thing is missing. He can touchfeelhearsmellsee, but the other sense, the one of **time** which he realises is normally unfelt because it’s intrinsic… that’s _not quite right_. He holds onto that flicker of _other_  in an effort not to go insane.

He also can’t work out who he is ‘supposed’ to be. One minute, he’s watching externally. The next, he’s in a younger-him. The next still he’s in a young… Ben. The sense of focus shifts like watching a holo, instead of being in reality. Emotions bleed out, and he wonders if this is how Kylo feels all the time: aware of others, aware of things he shouldn’t be? 

If so, how does he cope? How does he exist, when he hasn’t got a sense of me-not-you, when he knows things he has no right to, when he can feel the distress and annoyance and fear and revulsion of others?

Poe remembers this moment. Ben and he had been friends for years. Poe had been helping his teacher after class, and when he’d come out, he’d found Ben in the middle of a fist-fight with three other children. Ben was not usually violent, or… he hadn’t been. It had been getting worse, recently, along with the whispers of _he’s too like his grandfather_ and _he’s going to be evil_ and _Force-users are weird, don’t talk to them_.

Young Poe had not befriended Ben because of the Force, or who his family was. Young Poe had met a shy, kind boy with bright eyes and a sense of humour. One who empathised deeply, and who was smart and fierce. He’d liked _Ben_ , before he really knew who _Ben_ was. 

But lots of other people hadn’t. Seeing the memory through this new filter… is it supposed to make him dislike Ben? Because it isn’t working. He sees a young child land punches with a soul-deep ferocity, with self-righteous defence and a rising enjoyment at the sound and feel of skin and bone below his fists. The anger rises in him, the anger and the fear, and Ben bites and claws and scratches and Poe knows what actually comes next. An elbow to his own, younger face as he tries to pull Ben off the other three, and then a bloodied mess as his nose explodes and the pain and irritation. 

He’s not surprised to feel young Ben’s emotional state behind the self-defence attack. Is Snoke planning on making him feel disgust because Ben enjoyed part of it? Because the hot-angry-blaze flooded his system with endorphins? Because letting go of his self-restraint was a relief?

Young Poe had felt those things, felt disappointed and confused by Ben. Adult Poe has landed a few punches of his own, in defence of himself or those he loves. Adult Poe knows that sometimes you _do_ feel angry, and you do feel better doing stupid things. Ben just looks more human to him, now, with older eyes. 

Maybe he should have realised sooner, told Ben earlier that his responses weren’t those of a natural-born monster. Maybe Snoke wouldn’t have–

***

He’s not there for the second memory. He’s in a taller body, one still young, but older. He can’t feel the Force - or he can - but he knows, somehow, that he’s seeing what Snoke saw of Ben. What is this? Is it meant to make him call out to Kylo? Is it designed to make Poe sick? 

Taller, and unsure of himself. Other-himself. It’s confusing, he can’t pick his own now-responses out from the him-then responses. Anger and a sense of _there is no other way_ rush through him, and Poe watches with _disgust_ as his unbody carves through young Jedi.

It doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as they feel it should. The rage and disappointment and horror that swell up, and an artificially inflated sense of _right_. A stoked bliss that is unreal, a shock of pleasure that feels alien and other. Knowing at once that this is _it_ , this is what keeps them gone, this is what keeps them _apart_ … this is why he cannot go back. 

He did it. He - BenKyloHim - did this. Blood and piss and fear, and sweat that drips from his hair and onto his face. _It should feel right it should feel right it–_

***

“Why are you showing me this?” he rasps, voice raw. “I already know what you did to him, and what _he_ did. Are you trying to turn me? Because it won’t work.”  


**I don’t need to turn you. You don’t matter. You’re just a pilot.**

“Then why _do this_ to me?”  


No answer, but he knows that it would be ‘for _him’._

_***_

On a bridge. A narrow plank that juts out over a hungry darkness below. Starkiller. He was never on the planet’s surface, but he knows what it looks like, somehow. He’s still Kylo, another memory sent to torture him through the bond, or maybe designed to make Poe hate him.

Poe can’t hate him. He couldn’t hate him if Snoke showed him a hundred tortures, a thousand deaths. Each time he does this, Poe understands _more_. Maybe Kylo couldn’t, but Poe can.

Poe knows what it’s like to have Darkness in you. He’s had his own demons, over the years. He’s felt the cruel glee of shooting down a TIE or twenty, then sat in a bar and celebrated and ‘forgotten’ that behind every screeching skybird there were two lives he snuffed out. He’s felt aggrieved when someone insults or slights him (or, more often, his friends or the General). He’s understood that some days you _did_ want to punch your best friend in the nose on purpose. Maybe everything they said made you angry, and it wasn’t them, it was you. Or maybe you just wanted to feel the crack of cartilage and watch pink-red blood flow. 

Kylo’s urges are no different to his own, only… only he’s given in to more of them, taken the first few steps and thrown himself headlong. Poe likes to _think_ he’d never kill as many people as - no - _he has killed them, he blew up the Starkiller_ \- but it’s… different… it’s…

On a bridge, and he hears _his - other his - Kylo’s_ \- father’s voice. Han Solo. Rebellion General. Smuggler. Hero. Pilot. **Father**. 

The memory gets harder to be in, the sudden swell of emotional response is _overwhelming_. Poe drowns in it, in the shamehatefrustrationdisappointmentangerloveloss that is Kylo, mixed with the external sensations of _Han_ , through Kylo’s filter. They talk, and it’s too hard to hear words. It’s a distant thing, lost under the _I want to go home_ and the _I can never go home_ and the _I wish I didn’t have the Force_ and the _I’m too broken_ and the _I disappointed you_ and the _you disappointed me_ and the _you should have protected me_ and the _light is going the light is going the light will go and Mom will die and so will any hope it’s all too far it’s all my fault I have to do this I have to be strong I have to be brave I have to be Dark I have to keep going I must keep going I will be strong I will be strong I will **stop the pain and–**_

The blade ignites through leatherskinbonemuscle. It’s not enough it’s not enough it’s not–

–down… he… goes. Hand on his face, a last touch of memory, the last act of a father who was not enough, to a son who is not enough, to the whole galaxy which is broken in two and doesn’t make sense and Poe wants to scream _why did you do it why he loved you he loved you he loved you and you loved him why wasn’t love enough to save you why didn’t you understand that you were just the same as him and none of this needed to happen you didn’t need to join that bastard in the first place you’re not bad but you are because you did these things and I understand and that makes me bad, too, because why would I understand bad things if I am not bad and it’s all broken the galaxy is broken the good isn’t good and the bad isn’t bad and I’m angry so angry I love you but you did these terrible things and does feeling sorry even take away that you **did them you did them you killed them we killed so many people how can we ever call ourselves ‘good’ and it’s awful it’s so awful and–**_

Poe jerks back to the present with a choke and a sobbing that makes his whole body hurt. He’s confused, he doesn’t know - how can they call themselves good? How can a father who gives up on his son be good? How can a pilot who destroys a planet be good? How can a boy who runs in fear be good? There is no good. There is no Light. There’s nothing but pain and dismay and anger and anguish and passion and lust and hate and fear and desire and it’s just a screaming nonsense in his head, a maelstrom, a whirling cyclone of action-reaction-contraction-contradiction. 

Kylo did those things. Poe did those things. Han did those things. Leia. Luke. Vader. Kes. Shara. There’s no up, no down, no sense, no right. No moral compass aboard his ship, just an electrical storm and a judder behind his joystick and he wants it all to _stop stop stop stop stop please fuck stop._

The pain in his heart, in his mind, is worse than any they could inflict on his body. He screams through the room and the Force, the agony too much to bear, and yet he isn’t allowed the relief of unconsciousness, or numbness. Where normally he would scream into a pillow or the night or down a glass or sob himself to sleep, where there’d be a limit to how _much_ he could feel - right now there’s no limit. He’s pushed to extremis and kept there. He can’t feel _less_ , or even **nothing** , and he cannot - cannot - keep going under this level of emotion.

But he has to. He has no choice. The Dark whispers in the corner of his mind keep him feeling, and don’t ever let it stop.


End file.
